First King of Shannara (23 page)

Which was as it should be, he supposed on reflection. He had trained for this for the better part of fifteen years, for what constituted almost the whole of his adult life. His time at Paranor had been for this, if it had been for anything. Nothing else he had accomplished was in any way comparable to what was required of him now. Like other Druids, he had spent his time at Paranor immersed in his studies, in the pursuit of knowledge, and the fact that he had continued to develop his skills with magic did not alter the fact of his mostly sedentary existence. For fifteen years he had lived in an isolated, cloistered fortress, neither involved with nor engaged by the world without. Now, with his tenure at Paranor ended, his life was to be forever changed, and it began here, in these mountains, amid the ruins of another age, with a talisman unseen by anyone since the coming of Mankind.

So he must not fail, of course—that was of paramount importance. Failure meant an end to any hope of defeating the Warlock Lord, to any chance of creating a weapon that would destroy him, and, most likely, to Tay Trefenwyd's life. There would be no second chance in a matter like this, no opportunity to go back and try again. This effort would mark the culmination of years of believing in and practicing the Druid magic. It would vindicate both what the magic had been created to accomplish and the purpose of his life as a Druid. It was, he imagined, the defining point of everything.

His concerns bridged outward from there. The company was weary from being chased, from running and hiding, from escaping traps, from lack of sleep and long hours of travel. They had not eaten well in over a week, bereft of the supplies they had hoped to obtain, living off what they hunted and scavenged during their fight. They were disheartened by the loss of their comrades and by the fear, steadily eroding the hard surface of their determination, that their quest would not succeed. No one spoke of these things, but they were there, in their faces, in their eyes, in the way they moved, apparent to anyone who bothered to look for them.

Time was slipping from them, Tay Trefenwyd thought. Like water through cupped hands, it was draining away, and if they were not careful they would find it suddenly gone.

By nightfall, they were at the mouth of the pass, and they camped within a thin copse of alder in the lee of the mountains. It was cool here, farther up on the slopes, but not so cool as to be chill. The rock walls seemed to collect and hold the day's heat within the pass, perhaps because it dipped sharply into a low valley that spanned the east and west reaches. Eating sparingly, their water supply still good, they rolled into their blankets and slept undisturbed.

At daybreak, they went on. The sunrise poured down into the valley and lit their path with hazy streamers that flashed over the eastern horizon like beacons. Preia Starle led them, scouting several hundred yards forward of the main group, coming back now and again to report, warning of obstacles, advising of smoother paths, keeping them all safe. Tay walked with Jerle, but neither of them said much. They climbed out of the valley through its west end, leaving the shadow of the twin peaks, and promptly found their forward passage blocked by a massive berm that looked to have been formed of vast plates of earth cracked and gathered by a giant's hands. Ahead, the wall of the Breakline rose skyward, its broken peaks gathered together by those same giant's hands into bundles, all stacked together in haphazard and incomprehensible fashion, all waiting for someone to sort them out and put them back together again.

Preia returned to take them left along the berm for almost a mile to a trail that wound upward into the jagged rocks. By now, Jerle had exhausted what little there was of his recovered memory, and there was nothing for any of them to do but to press on until something in Bremen's vision recalled itself. They scrambled onto the berm, avoiding fissures that dropped straight down into blackness, staying back from the thin edges of drops and off the steep crests of slopes where, if you lost your footing, you could slide away forever. Jerle had been right, Tay realized, in leaving the horses behind. They would have been useless here.

At the crest of the berm, they encountered a slender, twisting trail, barely discernible from the land about it, that led through a narrow defile into the larger rocks ahead. They followed it cautiously, Preia going on ahead, the Elf girl stepping lightly through the mix of light and shadows, there one moment and gone completely the next.

When they came upon her again, she stood at the defile's end, looking out at the mountains beyond. She turned on their approach, and her excitement was palpable. She pointed, and Tay saw at once the cluster of mountains directly left of where they stood, spires jutting skyward at awkward angles, encircled at their base by a broad, high span of collapsed rock.

Like fingers jammed together, crushed into a single mass.

Tay smiled wearily. It was the landmark they were looking for, the ragged gathering of peaks that hid somewhere within their crumpled depths a fortress lost since the time of faerie—a fortress, Bremen's vision had promised, that concealed the Black Elfstone.

 

It had been easier than Tay Trefenwyd had expected, finding first the twin peaks in the shape of a
V
and then the clustered mountains that resembled crushed fingers. Vree Erreden's recovery of a forgotten memory and Preia Starle's tracking had brought them to their destination with a speed and efficiency that defied logic. Had it not been for the intrusion of the Gnome Hunters at various points along the way, they would have arrived almost without effort.

But now, just as quickly, things grew difficult. They searched all that day and the next for the entrance to the fortress hidden within the peaks and found nothing. The massed rock, boulders and plates alike, stacked all about the jammed peaks, offered dozens of openings that led nowhere. Slowly, painstakingly, the members of the little company explored each pathway, following it into shadow and cool darkness, tracing it to a slide or cliff face or drop that ended all further approach. The search wore on, extending into the third day, and then the fourth, and still the Elves found nothing.

Tempers grew short. They had come a long way and at great cost, and to now find themselves completely stymied was almost more than they could stand. There was a nagging feeling of time running out, of danger approaching from the east as the Gnomes continued their inevitable search, of expectations losing momentum and disappointment settling in.

Jerle Shannara kept them going. He did not turn dark and moody as Tay expected or revert to the temper he had displayed toward Vree Erreden after the loss of the Elven Hunters at Baen Draw, but stayed steady and determined and calm. He drove them relentlessly, of course—even Tay. He insisted they press on with their search. He made them retrace their steps. He forced them to look into each opening in the rocks again and again. He refused by strength of will alone to let them lose hope. He was, Tay thought on reflection, quite remarkable in his leadership.

Vree Erreden did not provide the help that Tay had hoped for. There were no visions, no hunches, no displays of instinct, nothing that would give insight into where the fortress or its entrance might lie. The locat did not seem unsettled by this; indeed, he seemed quite sanguine. But Tay supposed that he was used to failure, that he had accepted the fact that his talent did not come on command, but mostly at times and places of its own choosing. At least he did not sit back and wait on its arrival. Like everyone else in the company, he went out searching, probing the recesses of the collapsed rock, poking into this nook and cranny, into that crevice and defile. He did not comment on the failure of his talent to aid them, and Jerle Shannara, to his credit, did not comment on it either.

In the end, it was Preia Starle who made the discovery. Although the area they searched was sprawling and mazelike, after four days they had covered the better part of it. It became clear to everyone by then that if the vision had not misled them, then the fortress was concealed in a way they had not considered. Preia rose before dawn on the fifth morning of their search and went down to stare at the jagged crush of monoliths. She did it out of frustration and a need to study the landscape anew. She sat back within the shadows of a cliff face east, watching the light ease out of the peaks behind her, lifting to chase the darkness, to change the gray of fading night to the silver and gold beginnings of the new day. She watched the sun's bright rays fall across the towering span of the mountains, seeping down the faces of the cliffs like a paint stain down wooden walls, the color dipping into each dark crevice, etching out the shape and form of each rock wall.

And then she saw the birds. They were large, angular, white fishers, seabirds miles from any visible water, rising out of a cleft in the rock face of a peak centered within the cluster, several hundred feet above where she sat. The birds appeared in a rush, more than a dozen of them, lifting away with the coming of the light as if by unspoken command, soaring skyward and disappearing into the new day east.

What, Preia Starle wondered instantly, were seabirds doing in those barren peaks?

She went to the others at once with her report. She described what she had seen, convinced it was worth investigating, and immediately Vree Erreden cried, as if shown a revelation, Yes, yes, this was what they were looking for! The company was galvanized into action, and though stiff and sore from the efforts of their search and from sleeping on the stone of the mountains for five nights straight, and though hungry for food they did not possess and weary of eating the food they did, they went out of their camp and up the mountainside with a determination that was heartening.

It took them until midmorning to reach the cleft from which the white birds had flown. There was no direct route up, and the path they were forced to follow twisted laboriously back and forth across the cliff face, its navigation requiring deliberation and care with every step. Preia, leading the way as always, got there first and disappeared into the opening. By the time the others had arrived to stand upon a narrow shelf fronting the cleft, she was back with news of a pass that cut through the rock.

They went forward in single file. The walls of the cleft narrowed where the searchers walked, hemming them in. The warmth of the sun turned to dank, cool shadow, and the light faded. Soon overhangs and projections formed a ceiling that shut them away entirely. That there was any light at all was due solely to the fact that the defile was so rife with fissures that small amounts of illumination penetrated at virtually every turn. Their eyes adjusted to the gloom, and they were able to continue. The birds, they realized, were able to maneuver easily at the higher elevations, where the walls broadened. They found white feathers and bits of old grass and twigs that might have been earned in for nests. The nests, of course, would be farther on, where there was better light and air. The company pressed ahead.

After a time, the overhangs dropped so low that they were forced to proceed at a crouch. Then the defile branched left and right. Preia told them to wait and went right She returned after a very long time and took them left. After a short distance the defile widened again, and they were able to stand once more. Ahead, the light grew brighter. They were nearing the passageway's end.

Fifty yards farther on, the cleft opened out onto the edge of a vast lake. The lake was so unexpected that everyone stopped where they were and stood staring at it. It rested within a vast crater, its waters broad and still, undisturbed by even the faintest ripple. Overhead, the sky was visible, a cloudless blue dome that channeled light and warmth to the crater. Sunlight reflected off the lake, and the lake mirrored the rock walls surrounding it in perfect detail. Tay scanned the cliffs and found the nests of the seabirds, set high in the rocks. No birds were visible. Within the shelter of the mountain walls and across the flat expanse of the lake, nothing moved, the silence vast and complete and as fragile as glass.

After a short, hushed conference with Jerle, Preia Starle took them left along the edge of the lakeshore. The shoreline was a mix of crushed rock and flat shelves, and the scrape of their boots as they proceeded echoed eerily in the crater's cavernous depths. Tay cast his magic forward of where they walked, hunting for pitfalls, exploring for hidden dangers. What he found were lines of earth power so massive and so old that they tore apart his fragile net and forced him to rebuild it. He drew Jerle close to him and gave warning. There was tremendous magic at work here, magic as old as time and as settled. It warded the crater and everything that lay within. He could find no specific danger from it, but could not trace its source or discover its use. He did not think them threatened by it, but they would be smart to proceed with caution.

They went on until they were nearly halfway around the lake. Still there was no sign of life, no indication of anything beyond what they could see before them. Neither Tay with his Druid magic nor Vree Erreden with his locat talent could discover what they searched for. The sun had moved out of the shadow of the cliff rim so that it blazed directly down on them, a burning orb against the blue. They could not look up at it without being blinded, and so kept their gaze lowered as they walked.

It was then, with the advent of high noon, that Tay Trefenwyd saw the shadow.

He had moved off the waterline momentarily to higher ground, trying to see the far shore through the dazzling reflection of the sun on the lake's still surface. As he searched for a position that would lessen the brightness, he saw how the sun had thrown the shadow of a rock projection far overhead across the length of the lake onto the cliff face several hundred yards ahead. The point of the shadow climbed the rock wall to a narrow fissure and stopped. Something about the fissure caught his eye. He sent his magic to probe the opening.

What he found, carved into the rock above, was writing.

He went forward quickly to catch Preia, and together they turned the company inland. Moments later they stood before the fissure, staring upward in silent contemplation of the writing. It was ancient and indecipherable. It was Elven, but the dialect was unfamiliar. The carving itself was so weathered it was almost worn away.